For 25 years, Coventry City supporters endured every shade of heartbreak — relegation battles, ownership disputes, ground-sharing arrangements far from home, and two gut-wrenching near-misses in the Championship play-offs. This season, the wait is finally over. Under manager Frank Lampard, the Sky Blues stormed to the Championship title with 95 points, earning a long-overdue return to the Premier League.

A championship won in style

Coventry's dominance was emphatic. They spent 40 of 46 game weeks in the automatic promotion places, finished 11 points clear of runners-up Ipswich, and plundered 97 goals across the campaign — all without the cushion of parachute payments. It is the kind of consistency that demands respect.

Gordon Strachan, the last man to manage Coventry in the top flight before their 2001 relegation, returned to the city this summer and witnessed the scenes first-hand. "There are signs up — even on the road signs — saying, 'We're back'," he told FourFourTwo. "The community, football-wise, took a battering for 25 years. It's a different world now in Coventry."

From League Two to the top flight

The scale of the recovery becomes clearer in context. As recently as 2020, Coventry were playing League One football, having spent time in the fourth tier not long before that. The path from League Two back to the Premier League is one of the most arduous in English football — yet the club completed it in eight years.

Much of the credit belongs to Mark Robins, who arrived for a second stint as manager in March 2017 with the club 10 points adrift of safety in League One. He dragged them clear of relegation, won the League One title during the Covid-affected 2019-20 season, and came within a penalty shootout of delivering a Premier League return in 2023, when Luton defeated them in the play-off final at Wembley.

Strachan is unequivocal in his admiration. "I think Mark Robins is up there with Jimmy Hill, Noel Cantwell and people like that for the club," he said — a remarkable tribute, given that Hill guided Coventry to their last top-flight promotion back in 1967.

When Robins was replaced by Lampard 18 months ago, the decision was met with scepticism. Lampard's second spell at Chelsea had disappointed, and his time at Everton had been spent mainly keeping the club in the Premier League rather than building toward anything greater. Yet the gamble yielded a Championship title and a return to England's elite division — a result worth hundreds of millions of pounds to the club.

Grimes: a captain for the moment

One of Lampard's key mid-season additions was captain Matt Grimes, signed from Swansea City. At 31, Grimes had accumulated 485 EFL appearances but only four in the Premier League as a young Swansea player. He will now lead Coventry in the top flight, closing a personal circle as well as a collective one.

Strachan, whose family remain season ticket holders at the club, summed up what the promotion means beyond football. "For 20 years, it was, 'Who owns the stadium? Who's got the shares in it? Are we at Northampton or Birmingham? Who is the owner?'" he said. "The eyes of the world are now on Coventry, which is great, and they're actually talking about the football."

After 25 years, that is all Coventry City fans have ever wanted.